NRC has rubber-stamped license extensions and "power uprates" at 22 of 23 GE BWR Mark I reactors operating in the U.S.

Pat Birnie of the GE Shareholders Alliance has compiled U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) data on "power uprates" which the agency has approved at 22 of the 23 General Electric boiling water reactors of the Mark I design still operating across the U.S. (Nine Mile Point Unit 1 in NY is the only exception). Her chart is accessible here. The Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 which exploded and melted down beginning in March 2011 are also GE BWR Mark Is.

The single biggest power uprate, as a percentage of heat output (measured as Megawatts-thermal, or MWt), was a 20% "extended" type power uprate, granted in 2006 to Entergy Nuclear at its 34 year old (at the time) Vermont Yankee atomic reactor. This amounted to a 319 MWt power uprate (MWt must be divided by three to determine the Megawatts-electric, MWe, generated, due to the fact that 2/3rds of the heat generated by splitting atoms is lost as waste). The vibrational stresses caused by Vermont Yankee's power uprate led to the collapse of its cooling tower (see photo at left), and even contributed to a separate fiery explosion, when the increased pressure of flowing steam picked up loose metallic slag that had lain dormant for decades and slammed it into an operational transformer.

However, even bigger power uprates have been rubberstamped by NRC. The single biggest, at an individual Mark I reactor, was the 547 MWt of power uprates, granted in two installments (one a "Measurement Uncertainty Recapture" type uprate), at the Hope Creek, New Jersey Mark I. However, both Brunswick Mark Is, Units #1 and #2 in North Carolina, have each enjoyed a total of 487 MWt of power uprates, including a "stretch" type uprate, for a whopping 974 MWt of power uprates at the Brunswick nuclear power plant.

NRC gave the newly formed Exelon Nuclear Corporation (formed by the merger of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago and Philadelphia Electric Company, the first and second largest nuclear utilities in the U.S.) an early Christmas gift in 2001: a 17.8% power uprate at both of its Quad Cities 1 & 2 Mark Is, worth 446 MWt each; and a 17% power uprate, worth 430 MWt, at each of its Dresden 2 & 3 Mark Is. All four approvals took place on a single day, December 21, 2001. The combined power uprates at the four Mark I reactors netted Exelon 1,752 MWt of additional output.

While the nuclear utilities enjoy increased profits from the additional electricity sales associated with power uprates, the public downwind and downstream bears the risks of running these Mark Is harder and hotter than they were originally licensed or designed for. To make safety risks even worse, 22 of the 23 operating Mark Is have already received NRC rubberstamps for 20 year license extensions; Fermi 2 is the only exception, and it plans to apply for one in 2014. Pat Birnie has also compiled a listing of the 23 operating Mark Is in the U.S., including the reactor units' names, locations, expiration dates for their original 40 year licenses, and expiration dates for their NRC-authorized 20 year license extensions.

Pat Birnie has succeeded in getting an anti-nuclear shareholder resolution, written in the aftermath of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe, onto the agenda of the General Electric annual shareholders meeting, to be held in downtown Detroit on April 25th.

Update on April 2, 2012 by admin

The GE Stockholders Alliance issued a press release about the upcoming April 25th annual meeting today.

NRC violates its own environmental protection mandate: 5 Commissioners reject renewables alternative at Davis-Besse atomic reactor

Davis-Besse, located in Oak Harbor, OH on the Lake Erie shorelineOn the eve of the 33rd annual commemoration of the Three Mile Island meltdown, the five NRC Commissioners voted unanimously yesterday to reject an environmental coalition's contention that wind power and solar power could readily replace the 908 Megawatts-electric from Davis-Besse, instead of FirstEnergy's proposed 20 year license extension at the problem-plagued atomic reactor with a cracked concrete containment. The environmental coalition put out a media release, and plans to appeal to the federal courts at the first opportunity.

NRC's Atomic Safety (sic) and Licensing Board (ASLB) presiding over the Davis-Besse license extension proceeding has ordered pre-hearing oral arguments about the latest, cracked concrete containment contention. The oral arguments will take place on Friday, May 18th, beginning at 9 a.m. in the Common Pleas Courtroom at the Ottawa County Courthouse, 315 Madison Street, Port Clinton, Ohio -- about ten miles from Davis-Besse.

Update on March 28, 2012 by admin

U.S. Rep. Kucinich (D-OH)U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat-Ohio, pictured left), a long-time watchdog on Davis-Besse, immediately rose to the defense of Beyond Nuclear and its environmental allies, in a media release which stated:

“All that the four public interest groups (Beyond Nuclear, Green Party of Ohio, Don’t Waste Michigan, and Citizen’s Environmental Alliance of Southwestern Ontario) asked for was an opportunity to present evidence to show that the power output of Davis-Besse could be replaced by other sources of energy such as wind energy and solar energy. 

“The NRC’s own Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled a year ago that these organizations should have an opportunity to present their evidence at a hearing. 

“Yesterday, the NRC’s five commissioners took a highly unusual action, overruling their own Board, and slamming the door shut on these four citizen groups, denying them an opportunity to present their evidence.

“It is critical to get this information in the public record so that the public is aware of existing alternatives. The nuclear industry knows that it can be replaced. I hope the NRC’s decision doesn’t indicate that the NRC denies transparency when it comes to examining the financial, design, construction or physical limitations of the nuclear industry.”

On March 3rd, Kucinich joined with Beyond Nuclear and its environmental allies on a media release questioning FirstEnergy's "snow job of convenience," its dubious claim that the Blizzard of 1978 caused the concrete containment cracking, and that the problem has not worsened in 35 years.

On Dec. 15th, Kucinich honored Beyond Nuclear by entering its backgrounder on the many close calls to catastrophe at Davis-Besse over the decades into the congressional record during a hearing with the five NRC Commissioners as witnesses. Kucinich said Beyond Nuclear was an organization that could be trusted and counted on for accurate and truthful information.

Coaltion petitions NRC to close New York's dangerous FitzPatrick nuke

On March, 9, 2012, Beyond Nuclear and the Syracuse, New York-based Alliance for a Green Economy (AGREE) filed an emergency enforcement petition with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission calling for the closure of the James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power plant. FitzPatrick is a Fukushima-design GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor located on the shores of Lake Ontario in Scriba, New York.  Listen to WBAI (New York, NY) radio coverage here.

The coalition is calling for the suspension of FitzPatrick operations based on the discovery that the operator refused to voluntarily install a "hardened vent system" on their unreliable Mark I containment as recommended by the NRC in 1989.  The NRC took no action to enforce the installation and instead approved FitzPatrick's pre-existing vent system orginally used to purge containment at low pressure so that workers could enter to perform maintence and inspections. FitzPatrick is uniquely the only Mark I unit of 23 in the US that did not install the "Direct Torus Vent System" or hardened vent. In the event of a severe accident at FitzPatrick today, the operator (Entergy) will vent extremely high pressure, radioactivity and explosive hydrogen gas into a building adjacent to the reactor building with the expectation that catastrophe will be avoided by blowing open the room's double doors to the outside environment.

Entergy's plan to vent a severe accident to save containment relies upon an assumption that there are "no likely ignition points" along the vent path that would detonate the hydrogen explosion seen over and over again at Fukushima.  The groups are calling for a hearing to challenge such assumptions in a Post-Fukushima reality.

Update on defending Great Lakes against risky atomic reactors

Three weeks ago, we reported on Beyond Nuclear's efforts, in conjunction with environmental coalitions and concerned citizens, to shut down two especially risky atomic reactors on the Great Lakes shorelines that have been generating a lot of controversy recently: Palisades in southwest Michigan, and Davis-Besse in northwest Ohio.

A lot has happened since. NRC was forced to admit that Palisades has the most embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the U.S. NRC's repeated regulatory rollbacks have put it at risk of fracturing like a hot glass under cold water due to Pressurized Thermal Shock. And thanks to revelations by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, we've contended that Davis-Besse's containment cracking is so severe that its outer layer of steel reinforcement rebar is no longer performing its safety function. We joined Congressman Kucinich in challenging Davis-Besse's root cause report, which blames the cracking on the Blizzard of 1978, as a "snow job of convenience." Read more.

"Living on Borrowed Time" & "U.S. Nuclear Power Safety One Year After Fukushima": UCS shines spotlight on 15 near-misses at U.S. reactors in 2011, examines Japan "lessons learned," or not, at NRC

David Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), recently published NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2011: Living on Borrowed Time, describing 15 near-misses at U.S. atomic reactors in 2011 alone. Note that 4 near-misses took place at reactors belonging to one nuclear utility, Entergy: 2 near misses at Palisades in Michigan, and 2 at Pilgrim in Massachusetts. (Yet another near-miss occurred at Cooper in Nebraska, owned by Nebraska Public Power District, but with support services provided, yet again, by Entergy.)

The Thom Hartmann Show interviewed Dave Lochbaum about his report.

On March 7th, Lochbaum and Edwin Lyman, senior scientist at UCS's Global Security Program, released a report entitled U.S. Nuclear Power Safety One Year After Fukushima. Lochbaum and Lyman summarized their findings in a special published by CNN.